SANTA ANA, Calif. — A fairy garden is just like a big garden, only really, really, really little.

"How great is that?" Stef Lerer asks.

Lerer is one of untold enthusiasts who have fallen into the grips of fairy-garden fever.

"Once you do one, there's no turning back," she says flatly. "It's sickening. You just can't NOT do them. My poor husband ..."

It was a year and a half ago that her sister-in-law gave her an itty-bitty garden of miniature flowers and mosses squished into a rectangular tin (along with a toothpick-sized picket fence, brick path, iron arbor and porcelain kitty). "I said, 'Oh. My. God. That's the cutest thing!"'

Since that day, she has created another 20 or so fairy gardens for her front porch and back yard in Orange, Calif.

"It's not my fault," she says. "I didn't start it."

Beverly Turner did.

Turner, head designer at M & M Nursery in Orange, Calif., pioneered this style of gardening, at least in this corner of the world.

It was quite by accident, she says.

Turner grew up longing for a dollhouse, but money was tight. At 40, she decided to make the dream a reality and build herself one.

Being a typical gardener, she started work on the garden even before the house was finished. Turner spun roses, larkspurs and delphiniums out of craft paper and fabric and fashioned pathways, brick planters, birdbaths and bunnies. In the end, the garden was twice the size of the house.

Friends and family cooed over it like a new puppy. "I've always been fascinated with minis," Turner says. "This is when I realized I was not alone."

Wouldn't it be neat to have a real miniature garden, a friend asked one day. Yes, Turner thought, it would.

After pitching the idea to her boss, Turner began planting her first mini garden in a raised bed at the nursery. Six years later it still stands: a beacon to fairy gardeners everywhere. They come from Bakersfield, Cambria, and San Diego, Calif., and they stand before the Lilliputian land, marveling over every adorable detail.

"There's just something about creating this perfect little world," says Turner, who lives in Orange, Calif., with her landscaper husband.

The joke in the gardening community is this: "You should have seen my garden yesterday." There are always weeds to be pulled, bushes to be whacked. Flowers are forever fading. "But in a little 12-inch bowl," says Turner, "it can be perfect always."

Perhaps that's why 25 percent of M & M's customers now come for the fairy gardens. Sharon Clanin still makes a monthly pilgrimage even though she left Orange County for Redlands, Calif., two years ago.

"I sort of need to stop," confesses Clanin, 62. "It's addicting. I'm thinking, `I do not need another bowl."'

But then a spring wind blows, and the nursery calls your name. And once there you see one of Turner's latest creations, perhaps a hanging fairy garden with elfin thyme spilling over the sides or a rustic farm scene planted in a wheelbarrow. And just like that you're off the wagon.

"She's always taking it to another level," Clanin says wistfully.

When Turner began planting tiny gardens six years ago, she had to make do with the dozen or so herbs and other plants that stay teeny (an inch or so high) and spread slowly so they won't outgrow their cozy homes (everything from bird baths to buckets). She asked Native Sons Wholesale Nursery if they could find her more minis. Now the Central Valley grower is her main supplier.

When Turner planted that first garden, her boss, Ted Mayeda, believed "it was just a pleasantry for our customers." And when customers began demanding to know how to make their own, Mayeda wondered how long it would take to run its course. He's still wondering.

Related Article: Senior Events & Menus